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PS 2359 


.M14 


S6 


1922 




Copy 


1 




To Cecile 






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orewor 



d 



First Series of 70 Sonnets begun in 
1899 and originally printed by William 
Marion Reedy in St. Louis Mirror, 1900. 
Afterwards published in book form in 
1901. 

Second Series of 70 Sonnets and Proem 
begun in 1909, and first printed by Samuel 
Travers Clover in Los Angeles Saturday 
Night, 1922. Acknowledgment is herewith 
made to Mr. Clover for courtesy of per- 
mission to re-print this series. 



A"- 



uu 



2 72 



IISlDEX 



Page 

Life At Its Best 8 

The Wooing 9 

In tlie Fields 9 

Jealousy 10 

Books 10 

Love Without Passion 11 

On the Hills 11 

Worship 12 

Recollections 12 

Women 13 

Ideals 13 

In Idle Hours 14 

Selfishness 14 

Music 15 

A Woman's World 15 

By Moonlight 16 

Companionship 16 

Apart 17 

Apple Trees 17 

Reserve 18 

Vanity 18 

In the Woods 19 

Gold 19 

To My Wife 20 

A Woman's Love 20 

Midsummer 21 

Sisterhood 21 

Water Lilies 22 

Love's Philosophy 22 

To the Woman 23 

To the Man 23 

Morning 24 

Two Loves 24 

On a Country Road 25 

Reincarnation 25 

Analvsis 26 

Tact 26 

In Idleness 27 

A Burden of Vain Wishes 27 

Wisdom 9 28 

Lost Days 28 

Evening 29 

Youth 29 

Tapestry 30 

Sumach 30 



Page 

Love Letters 31 

December 31 

The Flight of Time 32 

Late Violets 32 

Autumn Reveries 33 

Rosemary 33 

Dawn 34 

Noon 34 

Night 35 

Anniversary 35 

Happiness 36 

In Days To Come 36 

Hero- Worship 37 

Waiting 37 

Dreams 38 

Affinity 38 

Laughter 39 

Sanctuary 39 

In the Beech Woods 40 

Contentment 40 

Sorrow 41 

In Winter Paths 41 

Steadfastness 42 

Pictures 42 

Shadows 43 

Life's Pantomime 44 

Seaward 45 

Laura and Petrarch 45 

Sea-Longings 46 

Spring 46 

Swallows 47 

Wild Lilies 47 

En Silhouette 48 

Sea-Memories 48 

Mother and Daughter 49 

Mother and Son 49 

Siwash 50 

Jason 50 

Death 51 

The Lark 51 

Faults 52 

Sooke Hills 52 

The House of God 53 

Illusions 53 

Reticence 54 

The Sun Dial 54 

Something Worth While 55 

Madonna Mia 55 



Page 

Tenderness 56 

Shells 56 

In Absence 57 

Summer 57 

Roses 58 

To You 58 

Midas 59 

Mount Arrowsmith 59 

Other Men 60 

Other Women 60 

By the Firelight 61 

Wreck Bay 61 

Before the Mirror 62 

Sea-Mysteries 62 

Heart's-ease 63 

Soul-Pact 63 

Sea-Harps 64 

Michael Angelo 64 

A Woman's Charm 65 

Gypsies 65 

Contrasts 66 

Time's Reckoning 66 

Lights and Shadows 67 

Autumn 67 

Cadboro Woods 68 

In Woodland Ways 68 

Outdoors 69 

Dallas Roads 69 

Courage 70 

Comradeship 70 

M^etempsychosis 71 

Unrevealed 71 

For Cecile 72 

Chopin 72 

Long After 73 

The Downs 73 

Bag-pipes 74 

Robert Burns 74 

The Shears of Fate 75 

From a Balcony 75 

Burnt-OfTerings 76 

Stars 76 

Winter 77 

Mortmain 77 

Fame 78 

Driftwood 78 

At the Last 79 



Sonnets to a Wife 

First and Second Series 

Written for Cecile McGaffey 



Copyrighted 1922 

By Ernest McGaffey 

All rights reserved 



PROEM 

Consider then the lihes of the field 
Even such as they, which neither toil nor spin; 
Clo3-ed with faint scent that mounts as ether thin 
In meadowy ways beneath the sun's bright shield. 
Lo ! with sheer joyance is their languor sealed 
Enwrapped of Spring, to April's self akin, 
Making each day a cloister, where, within 
Clad all in white, they saint-like seem revealed. 
Grow as the lilies ; stainless and serene 
Accepting largess of the sun and rain, 
Fresh as their fragrance, like them, lily-fair; 
Free as their life, with happiness as keen, 
Ever remote from grief's despite or pain 
Yourself a flower more precious still and rare. 



Sonnets to a Wife 

First Series of Seventy 
'Begun in 1899 



Sonnet I 
LIFE AT ITS BEST 

Life at its best is but a troubled sea; 

The ship is launched with snowy-spreading sail 

To face the reefs, the billows and the gale 
And meet the perils that are yet to be. 
The shore she left fades dimly in the lee 

And on the beach the forms and faces fail ; 

Come what come may, or rain or sun or hail 
The ship glides on, the mariner is free. 

But Ah! what joy when backward o'er the foam 
From stress of storms and far, unfriendly lands, 

Held in the hollow of the sky's vast dome 
To mark at last the well-remembered sands ; 

To know once more the harbor of a home 
And welcome of a woman's outstretched hands. 



©Ci.AG81191 



Sonnet II 
THE WOOING 

Not with the thoughts of others do I seek 
To wake your interest and hold it fast; 
Not with a fancy from the buried past 

Some honeyed fragment of the ancient Greek, 

Have I essayed in halting form to speak, 
But I have all such cunning outward cast 
And trusted to the Saxon words at last 

To light your eyes — put color in your cheek. 

The simplest speech is truest; when I say 

"I love you!" in those three words I have said 

All that I know, or compass, or can feel. 

Let those who will adopt the tortuous way 

The while their thought in speech obscure is led 

Round, round and round, a wheel within a wheel. 



Sonnet UI 
IN THE FIELDS 

When on the hills the golden sunlight lies, 
And apple-trees are heavy with the snow 
Of drifted bloorn that shades the grass below,. 

While far above are realms of cloudless skies ; 

When overhead the wandering swallow flies 
And butterflies in loops of color go ; 
Then as we wait together do I know 

Some touch, some hint, some gleam of Paradise. 

The sweet song-sparrow from the poplar sings 

The swaying leaves put forth their emerald shields, 

E^ach trembling blossom where the barred bee clings 
Its store of sweets through drowsy hours yields; 

What sense of life, what joy that almost stings 
With you and I there loitering in the fields. 



10 

Sonnet IV 
JEALOUSY 

If to be jealous is to hope to gain 

Your every longing — make all other men 

As misty to your memory as when 
The shadows slip across a window-pane; 
If to be jealous is to wish to reign 

Your one true lover, chide me once again; 

Call me as jealous as Othello then 
And all your chiding will be given in vain. 

For I am one who cannot hide my thought 
And curb my tongue and make my cheek a liar ; 

The tissue of my nature was not wrought 
Of lifeless clay, devoid of Pagan fire, 

And long in storm and anguish have I sought 
And now have found, at last, my Heart's Desire. 



Sonnet V 

BOOKS 

Tomes from dull minds I oftentimes have read 
And disquisitions of the great and wise, 
And sought to learn the secrets of the skies 

On wintry nights with starry scripture spread ; 

Through all-absorbing passage have I sped 
Of romance and of deeds of high emprise, 
But nothing found compared to your dear eyes 

Nor poems like to what your lips have said. 

To read a woman in the higher sense 
Is quite beyond the power of men's wit ; 

Who says he does is made of vain pretense 
And never can by wisdom benefit. 

Her look is more than spoken eloquence 
Her voice the sweetest lyric ever writ. 



11 

Sonnet VI 
LOVE WITHOUT PASSION 

Love without passion is a flower without sun 
Reft of the wind's touch, banished from tlie rain, 
Wrought against nature — therefore wrought in vain 

However fine its tissue may be spun; 

Its petals fade and crumble one by one 
And in the dust and under dust are Iain ; 
Love without passion is the dying strain 

From shattered lutes that all to minors run. 

True love is as the rose; the roses glow 

With life and color in the summer air ; 
The winds of Autumn through the garden blow 

The leaves are scattered and the vines are bare. 
The snows depart, the grass springs up and lo ! 

Again the ruddy rose is blooming there. 



Sonnet VII 
ON THE HILLS 

When in the valley where the river ran 
And sunlight rippled on its current fair. 
While shadowed vistas of Autumnal air 

Re-echoed with the dying notes of Pan : 

When twilight's herald came in night's dusk van 
While sank the sun in western splendor there, 
What joy for you and me all this to share 

Mid wooded glades and chords ^olian. 

And in the hush that followed as we saw 
The after-glow dye deep the waiting slopes. 
While brooding silence hushed the sombre rills. 
Then fell upon our hearts a happy awe 

And light and shade of mingled fears and hopes. 
Star-signalled on the ramparts of the hills. 



12 



Sonnet VIII 
WORSHIP 

Gods, idols, fetiches of wood and stone 
Of carven ivory and of beaten brass. 
They rise and fall, they flourish and they pass 

Or stand disfigured in some desert lone ; 

Creeds come and go and on the sands are strown 
And wither like the winter-shaken grass, 
And all such things are shadows on a glass 

To this one love which I for you have known. 

For in my Pagan heart I hold you dear 

More than a miser might his store of gold; 
Or ship-wrecked tar the rescuing sail unfurled. 
In my religion you are worship here 
Beyond all Gods or temples manifold. 
The sole and only woman in the world. 



Sonnet IX 
RECOLLECTIONS 

To conjure up old memories; to say 
"Do you remember that in such a June, 
An orchard oriole sang us a tune 

Melodiously from out a branching spray 

Of leafy denseness ; or on such a day 
We saw the silver spectre of the moon 
Long after dawn, and nearing unto noon 

A merest wraith of sickle gaunt and grey?" 

These are love's echoes, faintly heard and fine 
But ever-present, never dim nor mute 
That you and I in comradeship do share ; 
Sweet symphonies that breathe a sense divine 
Like mystic chords that linger by a lute, 
Though all the silver strings are shattered there. 



13 



Sonnet X 
WOMEN 

Of such a woman it may well be said 

She has a graceful carriage ; or is fair ; 

And of another she has golden hair 
And praise the poise and beauty of her head ; 
Some women may be witty and well read 

And some may charm by throats and bosoms bare. 

All are Eve's daughters, all her power share 
To conquer man and lead him by a thread. 

But more than seeming grace or outward sign 
Of loveliness that like a flower is seen, 

Is what she keeps shrined sacred and apart ; 
Some glow of soul like sparkle in the wine 
Some shadowy look, like Autumn pool serene 
The reflex of the pureness of her heart. 



Sonnet XI 

Not rhapsodies for what we cannot reach 
Nor longing for Vvhat lies beyond our power, 
But just to make life lovely as a flower 

By gift of tenderness in thought and speech ; 

Thus rain and dew their loving lessons teach 
In lace-like gleam or sudden-dropping shower, 
And so shall we, through every passing hour 

Hold fast to higher visions, each for each. 

Fidelity and courtesy; and touch 

Of hopefulness to meet the coming years. 
And strength to view the days that backward roll, 
These will I give you, and in pledging such 

Cast off the shadows of all crowding fears 
And act a man's part truly, heart and soul. 



14 



Sonnet XII 
IN IDLE HOURS 

In idle hours to backward look and see 
The tracery of wind across the grass, 
To mark the clouds that float in snowy mass 

With filmy-trailing pennants flowing free ; 

To hear a robin in the maple tree, 

And see the pool's reflection like a glass 
Where light and shade alternate come and pass. 

With muffled mellow murmurings of the bee : 

This was to drink of nature's brimming cup 
In woodland nooks of slumberous solitude 

Where summer holds a golden beaker up 
And all the earth by beauty's self is wooed ; 

Do you remember where the dead leaf fell 

The violet's blue, the empty acorn shell ? 



Sonnet XIII 
SELFISHNESS 

I want no child to take one jot from me 

Of this, your love ; no helpless, dimpled hands 
To hold their place as strong as iron bands ; 

I'd lock your heart and throw away the key. 

As now you are so I would have you be 

Till from Life's glass should fall the latest sands ; 
Till on the hearth the ultimate dull brands 

Fade out and leave us to Eternity. 

I know the children's power ; and I know 

Your soul would flower and blossom to a child; 

And loving you, I would not have it so 
Lest I of my sole treasure were beguiled ; 

To learn that bitter lesson late in life 

How far a mother loves bevond a wife. 



15 



Sonnet XIV 
MUSIC 

A wind-song in the rushes, or a sigh 

From Autumn's chorus in the naked trees ; 
The white-stoled chanting of the stately seas 

Against a Hne of cHffs that tower high — 

A plover's rippling whistle in the sky 
Or wailing of the flutes in minor keys, 
I in my time have harked to all of these 

And reedy plash of waters lisping by. 

But Oh ! how harsh such chords must ever seem 
Since in my heart I hear an echo come 

More sweet and low than plaint of mourning-dove; 
The reflex of the note that is my dream 
That music which makes other music dumb, 
The voice of the one woman whom I love. 



Sonnet XV 
A WOMAN'S WORLD 

The man she loves; and all he means to her 
Is what a woman's world is; in her way 
Of living and of loving day by day 

Sometimes her dreaming eyes will fill and blur, 

And memories of him will come to stir 
Her heart-strings ; as a blossom's self might sway. 
When through the flowery-scented paths of May 

Drift down the echoes of the winds that were. 

The little things are what she treasures most; 
Sv/eet, subtle courtesies of hand and speech. 
For these the lover's attitude still teach 
Better than costly gift or idle boast; 
As one who reckons not without his host 
Holding her near and dear, yet out of reach. 



lo 



50NNET XVI 

BY MOONLIGHT 

In shadow-haunted hush of lonely place 
With ripples lapping by the reedy shores, 
And glint of stars along the watery floors 

I see again the profile of your face ; 

The moonlight trailed across your wrist like lace 
Then disappeared behind its cloudy doors, 
While we sat idly with the idle oars 

Twixt earth and sky, as balancing in space. 

How strange and beautiful to us it seemed 
Held in the hollow of the night to float, 
With muffled liquid whisperings round the boat 

While overhead the constellations dream.ed ; 

Some faint-heard rustle from the distant sands 

And silence brooding o'er our close-locked hands. 



Sonnet XVII 
COMPANIONSHIP 

The sense of comradeship which now we feel 
Grew slowly as an oak does, and as strong. 
For now to one another we belong 

In all that makes a man and woman leal ; 

Our lives are linked as firm as welded steel 

And in our thoughts sweet harmonies do throng, 
Like half-remicmbered echoes of a song 

As days and nights above our pathway wheel. 

So do the perfume and the joy of days 
Live with us and the season's sway dispute. 

Spring, Summer, Autumn, they may go their ways 
And bring nor bud nor blossom an it suit; 

Yet what reck we, beside the wintry fire 

Sitting alone, I and my Heart's Desire ? 



17 



Sonnet XVIII 
APART 

Bleak, saddened hours, when separate we knew 
Days when the sun sank glowing in the west, 
And quietly the shadows onv/ard pressed 

Until the twilight blotted out the blue ; 

Ihe first faint stars came slowly to the view 
As home-bound birds flew silent to their nest, 
While swift as light our thoughts in eager quest 

Pierced outward, yours to me and mine to you. 

Now in the years when we together dream 

Those days apart have lost their sombre look ; 
Mere dog-eared pages of Time's well-thumbed book 

And not to us belonging do tliey seem. 
Thus fate at last hath offered full amends 
And made those lovers who were once but friends. 



Sonnet XIX 
APPLE TREES 

First to our sight their branches brown and bare 
Stood naked in the days of early Spring, 
Where haply showed the brilliant azure wing 

Of some conceited jay-bird roaming there; 

And then came May and all the waiting air 
Was white with dainty blossoms quivering, 
With hordes of bees that gathered there to cling 

And all those honeyed sweets to claim and share. 

But best of all was in the days of June, 
When thick and full the canopy of leaves 
Put back the sun with sheltering emerald eaves. 

And housed us from the fervent light of noon ; 
How happily we told there in the shade 
Of dreams of one another, unafraid. 



18 



Sonnet XX 
RESERVE 

Some men proclaim their love and let it go 
In pitiful wild words that all may see, 
How they have sighed or bended low the knee. 

God's will be done ; I was not fashioned so ; 

I know what utter love is and I know 
What this our life together holds for me, 
But keep it sacred, as not meant to be 

Flung gossip-ward to the four winds that blow. 

I marvel at those singers who aspire 
To lay their souls bare to the rabble throng ; 
For you my lips have trembled into song 

And you shall judge if I lack aught of fire, 

If that my heart-beats have not rung like chimes 
Within the echoing transept of these rhymes. 



Sonnet XXI 
VANITY 

To be as charming in your husband's sight 
As erst you were when he your lover came, 
Go linger by the mirror's polished frame 

And put all weariness to utter flight ; 

Come with a smile and let your eyes be bright 
Be gay, be sad, but never be the same ; 
And thus your lover you may always claim 

Else lost mayhap by holding him too light. 

An this be vanity — to add a rose 

To glow upon your bosom, train your hair 
So in his eyes you may be passing fair — 

Why, let it stand; a woman better knows 
That careless hands and sloven taste in dress 
May mar the spell of her own loveliness. 



19 



Sonnet XXII 
IN THE WOODS 

Deep in the glimmering depths of woods to wait 
Where countless leaves with every breeze unfold, 
To watch the sunshine weave its thread of gold 

Where tree trunks stand in tall procession straight ; 

To hear the flicker challenging his mate 

With chattering note far piercing clear and bold, 
And mark hov; dimly in the forest old 

The lights and shadows softly palpitate : 

And there, shut closely from the outer world 
To lie on some green slope and idly dream. 

Touch hands and smile while over us unfurled 
The leafy banners of the noontide gleam — 

That was to find the Ponce de Leon spring 

Of youth, and hope, and blossoms burgeoning. 



Sonnet XXIII 
GOLD 

There is a gold unlocked by miser's key 
And gold is found in lees of sparkling wine, 
And there is gold along the swaying vine 

Where yellow half-blown roses drooping be ; 

Gold and to spare among the sands at sea 
And palest gold in saffron stars that shine ; 
With gold deep-digged from many a hidden mine 

And golden leaves upon the willow tree. 

But all this aureate glitter is for naught 
When I in dreamful mood my love behold, 
Crowned with her tangled locks of tawny gold 

Like corn-silk in the breeze's meshes caught; 
No other gold may match it, none so fair 
As that which gathers in a woman's hair. 



20 

Sonnet XXIV 
TO MY WIFE 

I, as an actor, have played well my part 
Not showing how the sons of men I scorn ; 
Those shriveled, greedy souls who crave the corn 

The oil and wine, the treasures of the mart ; 

Deep in my soul I burn the flame for Art 
As one who was a lyric poet born, 
As one who leads a singer's hope forlorn 

Yet with unshrinking and unconquered heart. 

I can exist on what a Spartan can 

Endure as granite ; smile when friends do fail ; 

Face Poverty and see the years grow stale 
Or bide my time with any sort of man. 

Full in the teeth of Fate I fling the glove 

Come age, come death, while I have you My Love ! 



Sonnet XXV 
A WOMAN'S LOVE 

If I have fought my baser self and raised 
My thoughts to high ideals, it is due 
To this the love that I have found in you 

As I in your dear eyes have longing gazed; 

When I look back I find myself amazed 

At what I was ; what mire I floundered through. 
So far I* wandered from the pure and true 

While all my good intentions fitful blazed. 

A man is half a savage and he needs 

The woman's presence to arouse his soul ; 

Her love has given the world his noblest deeds. 
She is the light that warns him from the shoal 

The reefs — the rocks — where fell destruction leads 
And dark engulfing waters silent roll. 



21 

Sonnet XXVI 
MIDSUMMER 

The red-winged black-bird whistled from the reeds 
The cat-tail stalks rose thickly straight and tall. 
By meadow-slopes rang sweet a carnival 

Of bobolinks down-fluttering on the meads ; 

From ribbon-grass and downy road-side weeds 
Fine powdered particles of dust would fall, 
And where the sun shone through an old stone wall 

Danced in its light a multitude of seeds. 

Then came a hush in Nature — one that fell 
Like shadows on the leaves so soft it seemed, 

Or like that pause which follows when a bell 
Peals, and is silent; and we sat and dreamed, 

While all around the waters wove their spell 
And far above the cloudless azure gleamed. 



Sonnet XXVII 
SISTERHOOD 

All women born are sisters; low or high 
Good, bad, indifferent or how you name, 
Your silk-beruffled and most haughty dame 

Whose ornate motor speeds like shadow by, 

Your drunken courtesan with hair awry 

Barred, marred and scarred by branding irons of 

shame — 
Lo ! in their childhood they were all the same 

And have no false distinctions when they die. 

Oh! sisters, to your own sex most unkind, 

How will it fare you when you waste your breath 
And sink like bubbles in the sea of Death, 

If to your sisters you were deaf and blind? 
Remember His forgiveness, which sufficed 
For Magdalen, who washed the feet of Christ! 



22 



Sonnet XXVIII 
WATER-LILIES 

We rowed the boat among them as they lay 
Pale lilies, snowy and with hearts of gold. 
That sprang from under depths of oozy mould 

And starred the waters of a Summer day; 

And I remember after, that in play 

You wound them round your forehead fold on fold, 
And feigned you were a Naiad, shy and cold 

Or water-sprite or mocking woodland fay. 

\et an you were a Naiad this I know 

That you were courted by the amorous sun, 
Who kissed your creamy lilies one by one 

Till they had drooped beneath his fervent glow; 
But ere they withered in the twilight there 
They left their gold hearts tangled in your hair. 



Sonnet XXIX 
LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY 

A rock stands harmless from a little rain 

But many storms will wear its strength away ; 
And thus in life when men and women say 

Those bitter words which hasten strife and pain 

And still repeat till hope of peace is vain; 
Lo ! as the hour-glass sands divide the day 
So these small things have parted tliem for aye. 

And Love through such harsh means itself hath slain. 

A venomed adder is the human tongue 

When tipped with anger, be it either sex ; 
And who when stirred with controversy, recks 

How deep or keen the cruel words have stung? 
Curb then the lips and emulate the dove 
Lest wounding one whose life is in your love. 



23 



Sonnet XXX 
TO THE WOMAN 

To lead, not drive him is the wiser plan 
For tactfulness will tame him all the years, 
And tenderness, not tyranny he fears 

For men were ever but a stubborn clan ; 

And long ago since first the world began 
And stars rose dimly in the primal spheres, 
A little wit, diplomacy, and tears 

What havoc have they wrought with every man ! 

So shall you conquer as the gentle rain 
Soothing his vanity to gain your ends. 
Moulding his v/ishes till they meet your own; 

Thus as a child his confidence you gain 
For still to flattery his heart unbends, 
Only a child, a little larger grown. 



Sonnet XXXI 
TO THE MAN 

H you a woman would desire to hold 
Faithful and true and guided by your will, 
Be sure no art nor flattery's fine skill 

Shall e'er deceive her, nor will gifts or gold ; 

By love alone her spirit is controlled 
This is her law, her Deity, until 
The light falls pale upon her forehead still 

The red lips ashen and the heart grown cold. 

So shall you woo her if you wish to win 
Her heart and soul, to wear her like a flower, 

To drain her kisses and keep back her tears ; 

Filling v/ith love the space she lingers in ; 
Making her dream of you each passing hour 

With trebled longing through the iron years. 



24 



Sonnet XXXII 
MORNING 

The kildee's cry along the sandy shore 
The pine-tops in the distance, and a still 
Far sense of brooding on each wooded hill ; 

The fallen trunk of a huge sycamore 

Around whose roots the river's waters pour, 
And everywhere a subtle dawning thrill 
That grows and spreads and palpitates until 

The red sun peeps above the eastern door. 

What joy to stand above our vantage ground 
Beneath the shade of overhanging beech ; 

To drink in every chord of sylvan sound 

Learning the lessons that the woods can teach; 

Our hearts and souls by sympathy thus bound 
And happy more in thought and less in speech 1 



Sonnet XXXIII 
TWO LOVES 

If, loving you, I sometimes seem as sad 

Or dull or tinged with hint of sober mood. 

It is because I feel my life renewed 
Having your love ; and still my treasures add 
As misers do ; and what of woe I've had 

No more with its gaunt shadows may intrude ; 

Thus silence fills the happy interlude 
While I sit wordless, worshipping, and glad. 

A boy's love and a man's love intertwined 

I give to you to govern all the time. 

Whether it run to reason or to rhyme. 
The passion and the purity combined; 

The man's love, strong to fight and work and plan 

The boy's, to wake the lover in the man. 



25 



SOXNET XXXIV 
ON A COUNTRY ROAD 

A whitened length of grayish dust that leads 

Past a rough bridge where grape-vines idly trail ; 

From distant woods the whistle of a quail 
And butterflies that flit above the weeds. 
Horizonward a bluish haze recedes 

And flaunts a snowy cloud-shape like a sail ; 

The scent of strawberries along a swale 
Comes pungently to anyone who heeds. 

How slowly and how joyous passed that day 
The wayside roses climbing in a throng ; 

The far-brought odor of the new-mown hay 
The cherries dangling as we rode along ; 

And cheering us along the homeward way 

The sweet-wrought flutings of the robin's song! 



Sonnet XXXV 
REINCARNATION 

The flower you gathered, blossomed long ago 
Warmed by past sunshine, jeweled with the rain 
Of bygone years ; the river's liquid strain 

Which now you hear was once the purling fiow 

Of a lost stream ; the very winds that blow 
Have come and gone, will come and go again; 
And where the primal grass has decked the plain 

Year after year the later grasses grow. 

And thus with every line that lovers trace ; 

However dear or passionate the word. 

The self -same thought in a dead bosom stirred 
Has brought the roses to some woman's face ; 

And all the worship that my rhyming brings 

Is but an echo of forgotten things. 



26 



Sonnet XXXVI 
ANALYSIS 

To weigh as in a finely balanced scale 

Each thought and action that the season brings, 
Is but to fret the spirit with those things 

Which after all are of the least avail. 

It is enough to know we shall not fail 
In all the sweet and high imaginings, 
The nobler thoughts which lend to Love his wings 

Though Time and Fate and even Death assail. 

Analysis is common, and may seem 

Through instances, conclusive as the leaf 
Borne to the Ark by the returning dove; 

But oftentimes may prove to be a theme 
Which sends the v/orm of jealousy and grief 
To blight the blossom of a perfect love. 



Sonnet XXXVII 
TACT 

A woman's crowning glory is her tact 

The art of knowing when and what to say; 

When to be grave, indifferent, or gay, 
And seem so charming in her every act 
That as a magnet she will men attract 

And easily compel them to her sway. 

So shall she rule, or golden hair or gray 
The subtlest type of womanhood in fact. 

For tact is more than beauty, more than wit 
Akin to genius, and the sum of ail 

Which makes the woman who is blessed with it, 
A Queen by right in hovel or in hall ; 

Sweet as the honeyed lines by poet writ 
And true as rings the wild-bird's madrigal. 



27 



So^TTs^ETT XXXVIII 

IN IDLENESS 

To lie upon the grass and watch the herds 
Deep standing in the river, and to see 
The barred gold glisten on the bumble-bee 

And note the noisy gossip of the birds ; 

To mark the blue horizon-rim that girds 
That purple world beyond, Infinity — 
Under the shade of a wild-cherry tree 

To wait and listen, hampered not by words : 

This was our gladness on a long June day 
Companioned by the lazy lapse of hours. 

While ebbed the slow, enchanted time away 

Where bird-songs came like intermittent shower:: 

And drowsy sweet upon us where we lay, 
The perfume of the elderberry flowers. 



Sonnet XXXIX 
A BURDEN OF VAIN WISHES 

A burden of vain wishes ; hopes that died 
Vague dreams of fame and wraiths of brave renown 
Pass in the sunlight, motes that vanish down 

Beyond me, standing on this old hill- side, 

And disappear in circling vistas wide 

Like Autumn leaves that scatter worn and brown. 
When Summer lays aside her tattered crown 

And sombre winds and rusted fields abide. 

A burden of vain wishes ! Nay, not so ! 

Your hand-clasp is my haven and my hope, 
Your love and faith the utmost gross and scope 

Of dreams and fact — this at the last I know, 
Here, waiting while the sunset's after-glow 
Burns like a torch in valley and on slope. 



28 



Sonnet XL 
WISDOM 

There is a culture deeper far than books 
And intellect beyond the ken of schools; 
Wise sajangs sometimes on the lips of fools 

And knowledge stored in many quiet nooks. 

A woman is as cultured as she looks 

Speaks, acts, and smiles, and merely bookish rules 
She well may scorn as being clumsy tools 

With which dull fishers file their rusty hooks. 

This intellect that scholars prattle of 

Why, what does it accomplish? Every age 

Has witnessed through the perfidy of Love 
How woman shows the folly of the sage ! 

Nay ! then, Sir Oracle, reserve thy wit 

Some woman's eyes shall give thee need of it. 



Sonnet XLI 
LOST DAYS 

The tapestry of shadows — ghosts of dreams 
That flickered through the silence and v/ere gone, 
Lost days that we together leaned upon 

Have faded; and the recollection seems 

As dim as sunken starlight in the streams. 
When on a Summer night reflections wan 
From cloudy heights to watery depths are drawn, 

To glimmer in the current's under-gleams. 

Lost days but cherished; mirrored in a haze 

Of threadbare seasons. Winter, Autumn, Spring ; 

And Summer with her moss-begirdled ways 
And flash and flutter of a bird's soft wing; 

But who shall pierce the labyrinthian maze 
To tell us where their shades are wandering? 



29 



SONNETT XLII 

EVENING 

The tree-toad's call from branches cool and green 
And from the grass a cricket's rasping cry; 
An afterglow across the Eastern sky 

Red as a far-flung fire-brand's ruddy sheen; 

The lapping of swift ripples shot between 
Old logs that rigid in the current lie, 
The shadow of our boat that passes by 

Above brown sands that dimly now are seen : 

This was to float with silence and the night 
Wove through the mesh of twilight like a strand: 

To note the twisting of a bat's weird flight 
And glint of fire-flies on the shelving sand. 

To be removed from earthly essence quite 
Tv/o shadov/s drifting into shadow-land. 



Sonnet XUII 
YOUTH 

Age is not always given with gray hair 

Nor youth encompassed in the fewest years ; 
Since doubt and pain with their attendant tears 

Are dauntless etchers of the lines of care ; 

Youth is most present m the joys we share 
As swift or slow the season disappears. — 
The verve, the gladness which puts by all fears 

The hopes we nourish and the smiles we wear. 

I think of you as always being young 
Untouched by sorrow and unworn by time, 
Spring's blossoms opening in your tender smile ; 

Like her of whom the elder Bards have sung 
Chanting her praise in many a noble rhyme — 
Like Cleopatra by Egyptian Nile. 



30 



Sonnet XLIV 
TAPESTRY 

In the deep twilight when my random thought 
Weaves in the silence and surrounding shade. 
Webs of odd fancies glittering like brocade 

Or sombre woof of darker musings brought; 

Then have the hours with mystery still fraught 
Full on the wall a motley texture laid, 
Within the loom of darkness spun and made 

In divers hues together firmly wrought. 

And all the warp of this weird spinning seems 
Forever old and yet forever new; 

With rusted spots and sudden golden gleams 
A subtle blending of the false and true ; 

The dull threads hinting of my wasted dreams 
The bright ones telling of my love for you. 



Sonnet XLV 
SUMACH 

We climbed the slope above the valley's edge 
Behind, the country road a ribbon lay 
Of powdery dust down-winding dim and gray; 

A bird sang sweetly from a thorny hedge 

And ripples circled in the river sedge, 

While brown October dozed the hours away; 
And northward and beyond the hillside clay 

The clustering sumach flamed along a ledge. 

The life of ruddy Autumn filled its veins 

Deep-glowing masses glinting in the sun, 
Redder than the wild strawberry where it stains 
The woodland ways mid light and shadow spun : 
A gorgeous dream, a color-draught divine 
Spilled on the golden afternoon like wine. 



31 



SONNKT XLVI 
LOVE LETTERS 

Let the light flame consume them and be done 
While their charred fragments in the embers He, 
The old, sweet record of the days gone by 

Read them and burn them, lingering one by one ; 

The swift months gather and the seasons run 
With none to tell us of the when or why; 
Let them as ashes vanish in the sky 

Since this our courtship has but just begun. 

Better to miss them when we parted be 
Than through some fault or lapsing of the years, 
To have them made a target for the sneers 

Or jest, or scorn, of Curiosity; 

For there are those who tear such things apart 
To feast and mumble on a human heart. 



Sonnet XLVII 
DECEMBER 

The sleet drives sharply on the window-panes 
And naked trees like scaffolds darkly stand; 
The sudden grasp of winter on the land 

Locks fields and streams in glittering icy chains ; 

The north-wind wails in keen Polaric strains 
And dead leaves dance a ghostly saraband. 
While cloud-fleets dim, by shapes fantastic manned 

Sail westward where the sunset coldly wanes. 

But by the blaze of our red-glowing grate 
We see beyond the armored line of eaves, 
And mark the flashing of a flicker's wing ; 

And violets in the blue flames seem to wait 
While shining through a mist of latticed leaves. 
Beckons and laughs the sweet, fresh face of Spring. 



32 



Sonnet XLVIII 
THE FLIGHT OF TIME 

The flight of Time will through the cycles wing 
And one age follow on another's path ; 
The leaves of May will feel November's wrath 

And January blossom into Spring; 

And side by side we onward wandering 
Shall learn the lesson that each season hath, 
The bud and shard, the glow and aftermath 

The hopes that vanish and the dreams that cling. 

A day is like a swallow's shadow cast 
On sleeping waters ; for an instant there 
Etched by the restless pinion in mid-air 

Vague and elusive as the fleeting past; 
So let us cleave to gladness in our day 
While Time, that miser, hoards the hours away. 



Sonnet XUX 
LATE VIOLETS 

Fast-hidden in October's grassy swales 
Late violets lay; we found them, you and I 
While gusty winds unbridled galloped by 

And smoky Indian-summer filled the vales ; 

And when the grass divided in the gales 
They glinted there like bits of Autumn sky, 
Then disappeared as sylvan fairies shy 

When clamor rude their close retreat assails. 

Late violets ; blue as deep-sea depths unstirred 
They nestled there ; and heard the pulse of earth 
Reverberate within its hollow girth 

Like to a giant echo faint and blurred; 
And far beyond the sweep of Winter's wing 
We saw their paler sisters of the Spring. 



33 



Sonnet L 
AUTUMN REVERIES 

Along the slopes the fading stubbles show 
And in the woods a purple vapor swims, 
While hickory-nuts from the wind-shaken limbs 

Drop down and nestle in the leaves below; 

The sumach burns with ever-deepening glow 
And shadows lurk about the shallow rims 
Of silent pools ; while eastward slowly dims 

The penciled flight of a departing crow. 

And you and I here on this russet hill 

Drink deep the beaker of Autumnal wine, 

Held to our lips ; and feel the nameless thrill 
That ebbs and flows in changing shade and shine ; 

The breeze is dead ; the trees are rapt and still 
As pilgrims kneeling at a desert shrine. 



Sonnet LI 
ROSEMARY 

Rosemary for remembrance — may this be 
A leaf where treasured happiness is sealed 
Unknown to others ; which to us will yield 

(Our memory the magic opening key) 

A fragrant scent of the lost days set free 
A music to our listening ears revealed; 
As a rough shell that sometimes holds concealed 

The myriad murmurous secrets of the sea. 

For something to the written line belongs 

Beyond the word that's uttered; through the pen 
This verse mayhap shall come to live again 

And take its place among remembered songs ; 
When you and I and all our love and trust 
Are blended into long- forgotten dust. 



34 



Sonnet LH 
DAWN 

The grey dawn flooded in the lonely room 
That mourned your absence; on the western wall 
The sallow shafts of sunbeams struck, to fall 

As sadly as they would across a tomb ; 

A shadow in the corner was a plume 

That night had dropped from off her sable pall ; 
A thorny rose stood leafless in the hall 

Your going thus had robbed it of its bloom. 

The very pictures were aware of this 
As silver-stoled and silent slowly came 
The first reluctant messengers of dawn ; 

Of all you are and all you are to miss 

Byron seem.ed speaking from his oval frame, 
And Greek Aspasia whispered "she is gone!" 



Sonnet LIII 
NOON 

The book I hold within my idle clasp 

Is closed and sealed for aught I care indeed ; 
My mind has now no leisure hour to read 

No tale of love nor old romance to grasp ; 

My thoughts hang shattered as a broken hasp 

And touch of hands, not Fancy's touch I need ; 
For since you left my heart begins to bleed 

Where Memory has pierced it like an asp. 

To love you and to lose you for a day 
A loss irreparable to me it seems — 
The sting of Fate, the worm that never dies. 

I cannot live to have you long away 
And see, alas ! as only in my dreams 
The light of recognition in your eyes. 



35 



Sonnet LIV 
NIGHT 

What shadows troop across the fading floor 

What hush floats ever as the shadows turn! 

Like ashes brooding in a sullen urn 
Mocking the shades of those who went before. 
My thoughts lie heavy, and I dream no more 

But ever for your absent face I yearn ; 

And grudgingly my sombre lesson learn 
Of waiting for your footstep at the door. 

Mayhap my wish is selfish; just to see 
Your hand in mine ; to know that you are here 
Close, with the lyrics of your tears or smiles ; 

I cannot say what this will mean to me, 
Nor all the ways in which I hold you dear 
Across this void of unrelenting miles. 



Sonnet LV 
ANNIVERSARY 

This is that day of days when long ago 
We stood together by an ancient man, 
And heard him drone about the Scriptural plan 

Which plighted men and women here below ; 

And westward burned the Autum.n afterglow 
While scarlet vines across the branches ran, 
And flying leaves, a russet caravan 

Fled down the vales in rustling overflow. 

I scarcely recollect the spoken words, 

Nor care I for the ceremony vain 

Which said forsooth that God had made us one, 
Since Love had mated us as mate the birds — 

And on the windows was the west's bright stain 

The parting benediction of tlje sun. 



S6 



Sonnet LVI 
HAPPINESS 

Not to be happy in our own conceit 

Of faith, and truth, and well-remembered days, 

In breezy woods and empty pastoral ways 
Where the brown waves of leaves Autumnal beat ; 
But more to wish that other souls may meet 

And find their comrades in this earthly maze ; 

That men and women like to us will gaze 
Each in each other's eyes and find life sweet. 

When you and I together silent wait 

Not only do these thoughts of Thee and Me, 

Knock at our hearts as at an inner gate 
But through the wonder and the mystery. 

Deep in our dreams we pray a kindly fate 
For lovers past, and lovers yet to be. 



Sonnet LVII 
IN DAYS TO COME 

In days to come when we are old and gray 
Bent with the years and disciplined by Time, 
Trem.bling and feeble we will scan this rhyme 

Whose light for us has almost dimmed away, — 

And haply then remember if we may 

Some sweet suggestion of our youth sublime. 
Some keen reminder which like pungent thyme 

Shall bring the memory of our Summer day. 

There is no life but loving ; naught but Youth 
To make love perfect; when the rose-leaves fall 
The perfume withers while the birds are dumb. 

And thus indeed I could in very truth 

Pray that we both might early yield this thrall, 
And so lose Winter in the days to come. 



Z1 



Sonnet LVIII 
HERO-WORSHIP 

To every man some doting woman lends 
A halo of enchantment ; in her eyes 
He is most noble, loving, brave and wise ; 

This worship like to incense pure ascends 

And with her dreams in painted glamour blends 
Like rainbow melting in the western skies ; 
His lightest word is something dear to prize 

His chance caress for sorrow full amends. 

Oh, mystery ! that woman cannot see 

Her own superiority to man, 

Which soars on high like eagle's wing above — 
Just as it was, has been, will ever be 

Because ordained by God's primeval plan, 

Her greater faith, fidelity, and love. 



Sonnet LIX 
WAITING 

To picture you when far apart from me 
To guess how you might occupy the day ; 
Whether the moments slowly glide away 

And if the hours or swift or tedious be; 

And never from this patient vigil free 
But like a statue in the sculptor's clay, 
Musing and brooding, or as Moslems pray 

Stretching my hands through silence out to the? 

There is so little time, Love, after all 
To walk together ; such a little while 
Before our lives will melt as in a breath ; 

How soon, Alas, the leaves of April fall ! 
How much I miss the joyance of your smile 
And waiting seems the bitterness of death. 



38 



Sonnet LX 
DREAMS 

Not always have we prudent sowed the seed 
Of thoughts prosaic, as to wisely reap 
The less impassioned memories that keep 

Our lives more commonplace in word and deed ; 

For Fancy sometimes blows upon her reed 
And Romance dimly rises, half-asleep, 
While over heart and brain and spirit sweep 
Faint chords like wings from opened cages freed. 

Either a song of gladness or of tears 
In sunshine rippling or on shadow cast, 
Thus to our ears this mocking music seems ; 

Something to listen for through flying years 
Rapt echoes of the future or the past, 
The respite and the recompense of dreams. 



Sonnet LXI 
AFFINITY 

The sparks fly always upward, and my soul 

Spreads wings to meet yours as its one true mate. 
Whether the paths be blossom-crowned or strait 

Whether in gladness or in bitter dole ; 

No voice but yours can soothe me or control 
No words save yours my ways illuminate ; 
I am content to follow, lead or wait 

My eyes fixed ever on the distant goal. 

Not oak and vine are we but lovers twain 
Who face the world together side by side. 
And so shall bide until our latest breath ; 

In storm or shine, in burning sun or rain 

Through life's long ways in comradeship allied, 
Not to be parted by the hands of death. 



39 



Sonnet LXII 
LAUGHTER 

The touch of mirth still cherish as is best 

Laughter, with hps slow-spreading to a smile; 
What were this world without the quip and wile 

The cap and bells, the old time-honored jest 

And subtle tang of humor's Attic zest; 

Still with your merriment the way beguile, 
A little joy shall last the longest while 

Be gay, look up, be merry with the rest. 

For mark the limpid quibbles of the streams 
The joyousness that sunshine scatters far, 
The crooning exultation of the seal 

Better be glad with careless John-a-Dreams 
Than linger where the sober sages are. 
And lose the wiser sense of jollity. 



Sonnet LXIII 
SANCTUARY 

As from the toil and turmoil of the world 
I come to bring good fortune or defeat, 
And once again your loving eyes to meet 

Then droops the rest, like a lone banner furled 

By idle winds; for all my thoughts are whirled 
Toward you like a cloud of swallows fleet; 
And all the cares tliat follow at my feet 

Like wraiths against the darkness back are hurled. 

Home is where love is, and no doubt can pierce 
That inner space where you and I do dwell. 
Nor cast a lurking shadow on its floor; 
However beats the tide beyond us fierce 
However prowls with ululating yell, 

The ever-watchful wolf beside the door. 



40 

Sonnet LXIV 
IN THE BEECH WOODS 

Broad screens which shut the dawnlight from the earth 
Of virent leaves dense woven thick across ; 
And under foot were strips of velvet moss 

That sloped around the beech-trees' mighty girth. 

No bird-song breaking into sudden mirth 
But silence, and a sadness for such loss, 
With here and there a shred of sunlight's gloss 

To lighten up the forest's flowerless dearth. 

So must the Eden garden once have stood 

When Adam and his bride went on their way ; 
No birds nor flowers in the pleasant wood 
But sombre aisles and solemn spaces gray. 
Do you remember how we found it there? 
A green cathedral ghostly-still and bare ! 



Sonnet LXV 
CONTENTMENT 

To glean the fields of life and take the grain 

With thorns or poppies as the Gods decree ; 

To lightly jest at Winter's wrath and see 
Flowers in frost upon the window-pane ; 
To build our airy castle-walls in Spain 

However bare the near surroundings be — 

This is the secret of content ; the key 
Which men have given all the world to gain. 

We find it where the sun and shadows meet 
In sylvan spaces cloistered from the town, 
Where vague yet clear its presence may be seen 
It rustles in the dead leaves at our feet 
It catches at the ruffle of your gown, 
And beckons on with happy eyes serene. 



41 

Sonnet LXVI 
SORROW 

The saving grace of sorrow has been ours 

So that this present happiness is sweet; 

Yea ! doubly so since long ago our feet 
Were pierced by thorns, and seldom touched by flowers ; 
Past sadness with a rarer joy endowers 

These days in which our pulses higher beat; 

Like blossoms which uplift, the sun to greet 
After the stress of sudden chilling showers. 

Fire tempers steel; and thus the test of pain 

Shall make souls steadfast, and the true heart strong 
And bring tranquillity from stormy years ; 
Life's cruel lessons are not learned in vain 
And rightly runs the burden of the song, 

"They lightest laugh who knew the touch of tears." 



Sonnet LXVII 
IN WINTER PATHS 

The tumbled drifts like fixed and frozen seas 
Are billowed up around us all in white, 
The swirling winds on leafless branches smite 

And round about the trunks of naked trees 

Flit restlessly the black-capped chickadees 
Shy bits of grey in brief and silent flight; 
The woods are blacker than at dead of night 

And under icy shields the waters freeze. 

But yonder was a spray where on a time 
The robin sang; in that lone reach remote 
Wild violets gathered, bluer than the sea; 
Nor shall this dearth banish the water's rhyme 

The green of the grass, the blue-bird's April note, 
While side by side you wander here with me. 



42 

Sonnet LXVIII 
STEADFASTNESS 

We will not dread the future nor the past 
There is enough to live for day by day, 
Time and to spare for either work or play 

And the long slumber coming at the last; 

Cxod and Eternity are much too vast 

To fret us while we linger by the way. 
Sometimes we shall be sad and sometimes gay 

But heart v/ith heart and hand in hand stand fast. 

Let others seek the solace of the shrine 
Under the cryptic and inscriptcd dome 

That shuts from sight the far blue heavens above 
For us the essence of the true divine 
The hum.an joys that touch and sweeten home— 
And that denied the angels — which is Love. 



Sonnet LXIX 
PICTURES 

There have been pictures that were reckoned fair 
In olden times by cunning painters wrought, 
And far across the tides of ocean brought 

To hang at last like jewels old and rare 

In stately halls; but none that would compare 
To some one woman, by the Graces taught, 
With roses at her bosom, perfume-fraught 

And motes of golden sunlight in her hair. 

Tim.e picks their crumbling canvas into shreds 
Till dust at length it sinks in the abyss. 

And with the winds in errant circle blows ; 
But ere l^ate comes to snip the tightened threads 
There is no picture which is like to this — 
The one fair woman — at her breast a rose. 



43 



Sonnet LXX 
SHADOWS 

If we are naught but shadows, as they say 
Seen briefly as a sunset while we pass, 
If life is tinkling cymbals — sounding brass — 

And love a dream that quickly fades away 

Fate may not rob us ; we have had our day ; 
Have heard the music and have drained our glass. 
And if we are to perish as the grass 

Death cannot quench the spark which lit our clay. 

For Love beyond all else is vestal flame 
That burns forever, constant as is Time 

Steadfast and bright as is the Northern star ; 
And when, like mist, we vanish as we came 
Alayhap our passion shall imbue this rhyme 
With life for others, shadows though we are. 



44 



Sonnets to a Wife 

Second Series of Seventy 
Begun in 1909 



SONXET LXXI 
LIFE'S PANTOMIME 

I act a role in life's crude pantomime 
As one who stands behind the prison bars, 
And sees above him never- faltering stars 

March on, march on, in majesty sublime; 

Still in my heart do lyric echoes chime 
Still on my brow I wear a singer's scars. 
And know the gnawing agony which mars 

The one who sells his birthright for a rhyme. 

Yet after all, the part is played for you 
As half-amused, half-scornfully I scan 

The passing show ; what must be done I do 
And this at last may be the loftiest plan, 

Still to yourself and to myself am true 
If not a Poet, then at least a man. 



45 



Sonnet LXXII 
SEAWARD 

Within this rugged island of our home 
Upon a sloping down we meditate, 
And mark from out the narrow Georgian Strait 

These inward roIHng billows curl and comb ; 

The tides are weaving tapestries of foam 
Strand after strand along the tossing spate, 
While cloudless blue, as if to compensate 

For stormy seas, is arched the zenith's dom£. 

Before us is a rack of spindrift spume 

The gulls' wings, and the prows of outbound ship* 
Like cameos cut, a distant sky upon ; 
Behind us is an aureate waste of broom 
And now unfurled from under night's eclipse, 
The iridescent oriflamme of dawn. 



Sonnet LXXIII 
LAURA AND PETRARCH 

Petrarch, the Poet, madly worshipped Laura 

Yet like a beggar vainly seeking alms, 

Never attained the winning of her charms ; 
Sang of her beauty, nursed his rhythmic sorrow 
Hoped against hope, and ever sought to borrow 

Balm for his soul in sighing sonnet-forms ; 

Ah ! but the rounded heaven of her arms ! 
Fie on a slave who waits upon tomorrow. 

Unhappy Bard, thus star-like to enshrine her 
However fame thy laurel-wreath assures ; 

I count my wooing infinitely finer 

The flower that buds, and blossoms, and matures 

Body and soul to take her and divine her 
To love the woman and to make her yours. 



46 



Sonnet LXXIV 
SEA-LONGINGS 

I think a pulse of this mad ocean wide 

Beats in my soul ; the same response and urge 
Untamable; the ponderous lift and surge 

As here we watch the headless horsemen ride; 

Look how that breaker's curved, impetuous stride 
Stamps on the sands and sinks within their verge. 
So do my longings with oblivion merge 

Like buried shells which coiling sea-weeds hide. 

Could only one then of my lyrics last 
Along with this far-swinging rush and pour; 

Hovering a space, as do these gulls who cast 
Their shadows downward on the tumbling shore ; 

Saved from that futile wreckage of the Past 
The unremembered flotsam of No-miore. 



Sonnet LXXV 
SPRING 

The dog-wood blossom stars an emerald glade 
Pale as Narcissus when he stooped to see 
Bending to earth a slowly-drooping knee 

His boyish reflex mid a pool inlaid; 

In dormant creeks the water-lilies wade 
Through silvery vapor vanishes the bee, 
While naked Spring, in leaf-clad chastity 

Seems Eve in- Eden's garden, unafraid. 

I find you in the flowers and the grass 

In hyacinth whorls and primrose cups unsheathed, 
I think of you where ivy tendrils cling ; 
You are a Naiad in the water's glass 

Psyche herself, with odorous violets wreathed, 
The idyl and awakening of Spring. 



47 



Sonnet LXXVI 
SWALLOWS 

They swerve and pass, they ever rise and dip 
And to these pools in pHant motion bring, 
The tokens of their pilgrim wandering 

Upon a limpid scroll of watery scrip 

Which ruffles to each signing pinion-tip, 
As though the im^print of a sv/allow's wing 
Wrote March-borne tidings of the ides of Spring, 

In jewelled drops that to the surface drip. 

How often have we caught their sinuous flight 
In penciled tracings through the upper air ; 

Wheeling and following to our watchful sight 
O'er salt lagoon and pastured spaces bare, 

Till twilight deepened with approaching night 
And smoothed the waters into velvet there. 



Sonnet LXXVII 
WILD LILIES 

What time the noiseless steps of wayward Spring- 
Reached and passed on mid forest-ways unseen, 
Where polished leaf and tufted mosses green 

In chequered light were softly wavering : 

There did we mark the pensive Goddess fling 
Her sacred lilies ; thickly sown between 
Amid the roots and trembling bladed sheen 

Where dewdrops and the cobweb's gossamer cling. 

Wild lilies ; sheltered in this cool retreat 
Like neophytes to nun-like peace withdrawn ; 

And paler than the timorous marguerite 
By altars fair of bird-wing-haunted lawn; 

Their heads down-bent, submissively to greet 

Through eastward tinge the Angelus of the Dawn. 



48 



Sonnet LXXVIII 
EN SILHOUETTE 

How stealthily uncoiling does it creep 
About us here, this chiaroscuro dim, 
How shadowy the bats around us skim 

While seas beyond move restless in their sleep ; 

Hark to the winds, their rallying cohorts sweep 
Northward to meet a vague horizon-rim, 
While starlit bubbles, beading over-brim 

Night's chalice poured from her Cimmerian steep. 

That winking light, which tells of an abode 

These whispers murmured from the inky stream 

That meteor's rush, how rocket-like it glowed 
How strange our voices in this darkness seem; 

The while we hear in lapping chords below 
The wash of waves in soft adagio. 



Sonnet LXXIX 
SEA MEMORIES 

White shells ; green dulse ; and pebble-dotted strands 
Below our path with shapes of rock and hill. 
And brackish tides which never can be still ; 

Lovers slow walking with close-folded hands — 

One mast far out, that tree-like lonely stands 
With listless sails to either droop or fill 
As the wind veers ; and over all a thrill 

Of seas unsailed and venturous foreign lands. 

A century from now will see the same. 

Green dulse, white shells, a convoluted beach 
And panoramas of or storms or calms ; 
Sails to reflect the sunset's molten flame 
While facing westward, rapt and lost for speech 
Will other lovers wait with clinging palms. 



49 



Sonnet LXXX 
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 

This idolizing girl who to you turns 
And twines herself about your Mother-love, 
Which lioness-fierce, yet gentle as the dove 

Within your bosom heaving throbs and burns — 

As flower with flower, a vestal maiden yearns 
Lifting her face to meet your face above ; 
Herself the semblance and reminder of 

Some lily rising from the terrace urns. 

So in good time mayhap she may be blest 
With her own child ; as now you are by her. 
More goodly than or frankincense or myrrh 

The incense of her kisses at your breast ; 

So once you twined v\^ithin your Mother's arms 
With all your own and all your daughter's charms. 



Sonnet LXXXI 
MOTHER AND SON 

For one blurred instant, looking on you two 
It seemed I was a little boy again ; 
Purged of the vileness of the sons of men 

With eyes as clear as drops of morning dew; 

Yet this was sheerest paradox I knew — 
Born of some inner fantasy, as when 
Lost days drift upward to the startled ken. 

And for our love and pity doubly sue. 

Sweet, baby eyes ; twin fountains undefiled 
And in their depths my profile shadowed there 
Beyond the dominance of wasting care ; 

O my dead youth ! was ever I a child ? 
What master-chemist mixes this alloy 
The child in man, the Father in the boy! 



50 



Sonnet LXXII 
SIWASH 

This plaited wicker basket which you raise 
In smiling token bidding me to look, 
Unfolds the past like opening a book 

Of which I know each retrospect and phrase; 

It shows again the walled Alberni bays 

Where we our pilgrimage to westward took. 
By mossy bank, and fern-frequented nook 

And undulating droop of lowland braes. 

How clear my recollection paints it all! 

The Beaufort peaks uprearing one by one ; 
The Somass river eddying to its fall 

With ripple-harps where turbulent rapids run, 
Just you and I ; a wood-bird's languorous call 

And Indian children playing in the sun. 



Sonnet LXXXIII 
JASON 

At such an hour and loitering by the shore 
When hazy quiet sends a dreamful peace, 
Where winds are lulled, and tidal ebbings cease 

While that the sea is sapphire to its core, — 

There have we talked of legendary lore 

Sirens and mermaids ; chronicles of Greece, 
And that far voyage for the gilded fleece 

By Jason hazarded in days of yore. 

Aye ! so they strove, as heroes do and dare 
And yet what joy to Jason and his crew, 

Could they have found this one sole treasure rare 
For which men search the universes through ; 
Some woman waiting by the sands like you 

Shaming the sunlight with her golden hair. 



"51 



Sonnet LXXXIV 
DEATH 

There is no death; so nature makes reply 

While twig and leaf are quivering in the sun, 
While buds expand or glancing waters run 

Through shell-paved shallows racing swiftly by; 

And you and I, our sudden-severed tie 
Shall with the earth be woven into one, 
When stars arise and after day is done 

Though each by each in dreamless slumber lie. 

Since all must live as long as lasts the earth 
Dust unto dust, even as a Prophet saith ! 

Revive with flowers and join the sunbeam's mirth 
However ceases this our mortal breath. 

Why shun the later and the happier birth? 

How thankless, then, this coward fear of death! 



Sonnet LXXXV 
THE LARK 

Above the daisied uplands of the Spring 

Beyond the flowering slopes at Gordon Head, 
We saw a bird with pinions wide outspread 

That mounted up and up on rising wing; 

Breathless we listened to a sky-lark sing 
In rippling aria through cloud-land shed, 
Till last in ecstasy the carol fled 

To leave us tranced, and wholly v/ondering. 

This was the herald in the shape of bird 

Who sprang one morning from an English lea, 
And drew his hearer to the heights along; 
This was the lark that Percy Shelley heard 
And fired by rival classic minstrelsy, 
Made him immortal in a Poet's song. 



52 



Sonnet LXXXVI 
FAULTS 

Think of me always as a man who came 
Into your life to serve you with a song; 
Strong in his hate and in his loving strong 

In triumph or adversity the same. 

Knowing the hollowness of wealth and fame 
Striving for right, and challenging the wrong, 
With dreams and fancies still that upward sprung 

As mounting sparks leap higher than the flame. 

Thus shall you weigh me as I would be weighed 
Much as I lack, yet giving me my due ; 

Judging how far my destiny was swayed 
Just with the boon of being loved by you ; 

Making my faults the most of me, and then 

Holding me different from the lesser men. 



Sonnet LXXXVII 
SOOKE HILLS 

So often from this overhanging quay 
Have we at sundown scanned the western hills, 
Darkling where haze of deepening purple spills 

Lilac and amethyst in a gloomering sea 

Vaguely defined in its immensity ; 

While nearer seen the inner harbor fills 
With log-booms towing to the dusty mxills, 

Where saw and belt hold screaming jubilee. 

And peering outward on this pictured vast 
While duskily the evening shades withdrew. 

At times we marked a coppery outline cast 
Faint on the wave and fading in the blue — 

A tribal relic of the Island's past 
The Songhee, paddling in his carved canoe. 



53 



Sonnet LXXXVIII 
THE HOUSE OF GOD 

The organ's dolorous minor pierces through 
And garnet sunlight slowly falling, stains 
Lord Christ, imprinted on these window-panes 

Red as the blood the soldier's spear-thrust drew 

And in this spacious temple I and you 
Where leisurely a formal service reigns, 
Sit silent ; while the sermon's rhetoric deigns 

Its flattery to each fashionable pew. 

Yet all this brings no twinge of penitence 
To my stern soul, which other ritual craves ; 

Such as I've heard with heart-felt reverence 
Choralled by winds mid forest architraves ; 

Or low-intoned near some sea-eminence 
The suppliant susurrus of the waves. 



Sonnet LXXXIX 
ILLUSIONS 

We live as though there was no pen to trace 

The payment of the last appointed debt ; 

And still each hour death spreads his fated net 
Entangling Age and Youth's pathetic grace; 
We love as we had conquered time and space 

We two remote on dream-land's parapet; 

Twin spirits in a spirit-circle met 
Where phantom forms and masquers interlace. 

This be a symbol for both night and day 
Love without fear; whatever is or seems; 

Before life's fires are sunk to dull decay 

And the long lights have faded from the streams. 

This is a truth forever and for aye 
All but illusions are as idle dreams. 



54 



Sonnet XC 
RETICENCE 

They say reserve will often set a seal 

Close upon lips which otherwise would speak, 
And with the medium of language seek 

Their inner minds to presently reveal 

The joy that thrills them, or the pain they feel ; 
So men have curbed through diffidence or pique, 
The impulse flashed from brain to burning cheek 

As spark that flies from clashing flint and steel. 

Sometimes when most I love you I am curst 
With this strange hesitance of heart and soul ; 

Even as a rose before the bud has burst 
To write its passion on the garden scroll, 

In crimson petals of untold desire 

Steeped in a revery and aglow with fire. 



Sonnet XCI 
THE SUN-DIAL 

It stands alone in consecrated ground 
As old as this old yew-tree's hoary moss 
Which waits beside ; its shadow flung across 

That follows slow the tireless hours around 

Has you and me together often found 

Watching the sun's rays sift their feathery dross, 
Counting the moments and their constant loss 

While sullen fate went by without a sound. 

And now forgotten, but in bygone days 

Here in their turn have others wooers come. 

To muse amid these memory-haunted ways 
And prove with Time his never-ending sum ; 

Closed eyes, Alas ! which nevermore may gaze 
Closed lips, Ah ! me, that now are stricken dumb. 



55 

Sonnet XCII 
SOMETHING WORTH WHILE 

To tramp a tread-mill round o'er street and pave 
Be-calendered of dry commercial days, 
As by this bastion's sea-encircling sprays 

The sentinel walks onward by the wave : — 

A sordid score of petty tasks to brave 

And delve among the compost for what pays 
The current charge, — seems in this tortuous maze 

The humdrum occupation of a slave. 

Yet could I on some immemorial page 

Recall one interval you did beguile, 
Past all corrosion of or death or age 

Etch but the least enchantment of your smile. 

Ah ! that, indeed, were something worth my while 
To break the bonds of life's dread vassalage. 



Sonnet XCIII 
MADONNA MIA 

It may be partly true that Raphael 
Across whose tomb the centuries have filed, 
By what he grouped of Mother and of Child 

In coloring and technique did excel 

All other artists; just what lends the spell 
Which lingers in their eyes expression mild, 
That couples love with long reconciled 

In his Madonna, history does not tell. 

I saw a picture painted here today 
Like Raphael's, but fairer far to me ; 

In luminous color framed against the grey 
Unutterable sadness of the sea. 
Yourself, My Love, our baby on your knee 

And in the wind your gold hair blown astray. 



56 



Sonnet XCIV 
TENDERNESS 

Because upon the Spartan I relied 

Not seeking solace from a God on high, 
Some name me cold and hardened ; even I 

As one to whom is callousness implied ; 

You know the adamant nature of my pride 
Which shall exist beyond the day I die, 
Not from my lips has welled the despairing cry 

Although I have been ten times crucified. 

With those perchance world-wounded over-much 
No outward scars upon the soul remain ; 

Do I then, lack in sympathy's close touch 
What answer gives your inmost heart's refrain? 

For if it be you think of me as such^ 

Then have I loved and sung of you in vain. 



Sonnet XCV 
SHELLS 

The lisping symphonies of the shells you bring 
Dripping with brine, to lay within my hand, 
A.re something dreamers only understand 

The tones they murmur and the runes they sing ; 

Still through their arches do beseechings ring 
Like those which ebb-tides plash along the sand, 
When seas are draped with night's funereal band 

As evening fails, and cormorants take wing. 

Such were the melodies Ulysses fought 
Sinking and rising with an ocean swell ; 

And down to us on wings of legend brought 
Caged by the pearly chambers of a shell ; 

For in these sea-born spirals it is thought 
1^ The imprisoned spirits of the Sirens dwell. 



57 



SoNxNET XCVI 

IN ABSENCE 

The dawn-light knits a mesh of mottled pearl 
Across the reddening threshold of the morn ; 
Slow tides move, and another day is born 

Where sunny hosts their guidons now unfurl ; 

The noon-beams over closing blossoms curl 

Till homing birds and gathering shades forewarn, 
And I stand dreamingly and all forlorn 

With thoughts that rise and southward to you whirl. 

Like arrow loosed my soul to meet you flies 
The hours indeed seem more as lagging years; 

Yet while I w^ait, heart-visioned to mine eyes 
Your very self, in a mirage appears ; 

As though beside this desert-stretching sea 

You rose, and came, and smiled and spoke to me. 



Sonnet XCVII 
SUMMER 

The fir-trees climb this broken mountain-side 
The mother-grouse leads forth her downy brood ; 
I cannot feel what men call solitude 

Amid such sylvanry aloft enskyed 

In fleecy rings; for, instinct as my guide. 
My nature seems comipanioned and imbued 
With cloud and glen ; though language is all crude 

To well translate what is to words denied. 

The loveliness of summer walks these dells. 
Above, a sharp peak cuts the violet sky 
As if it sprang to clear the barriered blue ; 
Below, the Saanich inlet arching swells 
And here with heart-recounted longing, I 
Do wait and question, thinking aye of you. 



58 

Sonnet XCVIII 
ROSES 

Roses and roses ; roses flaring red 
Yellow and pink or petalled as the snow, 
Beside the windings of this parterre grow 

On many a trim and quaintly terraced bed ; 

Their radiant tinges lavishly outspread 

Through leaves that waver when the south-winds blow 
In faint and tender flute-like tremolo, 

Past gate and arbor whisperingly sped. 

You seem a rose here by this pebbly walk 

Red for your lips a white rose for your hand. 

I would give much an chance might grant me this 
That bending like a blown rose on the stalk, 
You, turning to this pathway where I stand 
Drop me one ruddy petal of a kiss. 



Sonnet XCIX 
TO YOU 

Something harmonious is in your eyes 
Akin to swaying waters, where the moon 
Leads the tides on in foamy rigadoon. 

While curtseying waves alternate dip and rise ; 

Something there is which in their pathos lies 
Sad as a plaint of this unmemoried tune. 
Which drifts in poignance through the leaves of June 

O'er-canopied by slumbering Summer skies. 

Thus brown as Autumn do they with me bide 
And touched with m.elody as is the wind 
That sounds its syrinx by untrodden ways ; 
And they will draw me as the moon the tide 
Howevermore though stricken years be thinned, 
Down all the length of these my nights and days. 



59 



Sonnet C 
BROOM 

Here Midas had his wish; for near and far 
The saffron broom in solid masses hfts, 
Fold upon fold in packed and glittering drifts 

Without a speck its burnished shield to mar ; 

Below, the tide across a shingly bar 

Swept by the foam incessant trails and shifts, 
Where a cramped sea crawls upward through its rifts 

Of cliffs deep-graven by their wave-worn scar. 

When first we saw this greet us on a marge 
Of noon-lit brightness glimmering to the sea, 
It turned our thoughts to tournaments of old; 
King Richard of the lion-heart at charge, 
Crusades and Knights, the Age of Chivalry 
And jousting on the-field-of-the-cloth-of-gold. 



Sonnet CI 
MOUNT ARROWSMITH 

The mountain road wound upward like a snake 
A sluggish python wallowing in dust, 
And gnarled arbutus shed its barky crust 

There by the wayside tawny flake on flake ; 

The river through a steep-descending brake 
Past log and boulder tarnished deep with rust, 
A sword-sharp current downward headlong thrust 

And sheathed in its cataract in a void opaque. 

And looking skyward from a path we saw 
Beyond the fir-trees massed in plumy crowds, 

A sight that filled our very souls with awe — 
Mount Arrowsmith, attended by the clouds ; 

Majestic looming and with rainbow spanned 

A Titan figure poised by God's own hand. 



60 



Sonnet CII 
OTHER MEN 

I was not good, like others you had met 
I would I had been perfect for your sake; 
My stubbornness not even death may break 

Though marbled to f orgetfulness ; and yet 

How keen were then my anguish could regret 
For what I was, the slightest ripple make 
On this, our love ; or cause your heart to ache 

Or your dear eyes with sorrowing thoughts be wet. 

If I had sinned be sure I paid the wage. 

If I repented, so men do; what then? 
This I affirm as truth shall be my gage 

As I have said and say it once again, 
From passionate youth and on to fiery age 

I was not chained to earth like other men. 



Sonnet CIII 
OTHER WOMEN 

Tlie chords of Sappho's fragmentary line 
Re-echo with a v/orld-compelling strain ; 
And Greek Aspasia by the Attic main 

The star of Pericles v/ill ever shine ; 

Enchantresses with outward selves divine 
The form of Ruth beside the sickled grain, 
Rebecca's face, the Templar's suing vain 

Lucrece's fate and Tarquin's base design. 

I conjure up their m.emory, musing so; 

The waywardness or constancy they knew. 
And her whose sorcery wrought colossal woe 

That Trojan temptress whom Kit Marlowe drew 
I know themx all and truer yet I know 

There is no woman in the world but you. 



61 



Sonnet CIV 
BY THE FIRELIGHT 

The back-log shrinks and dwindles to a shred 
As we sit here before the fire-side glow, 
We two alone ; as once in long ago 

Together then the lambent coals we read; 

How quickly there the plastic hours were sped 

While dimmed our half-charred castles sinking low, 
Till that awakening which stirred us so 

The life-pact wedded and the words we said. 

Prone rest these ashes whence a hearth-stone ghost 
A space agone had darted up the flue, 

And flickeringly a thin flare sinks and dies ; 
Sometimes I think that silence says the most, — 
I tell you nothing with my lips that you 
Have not repeated to me with your eyes. 



Sonnet CV 
WRECK BAY 

Black with the raging fury of despair 
On barricades of scarred outlying stone 
The waves break baffled; and uprearing thrown 

Hissing and snaky, with ophidian stare, 

Medusa heads with wild and tangled hair 
From wrinkled foreheads backward streaming blown, 
In bas-relief are on the sky-line shown 

Above the ramparts serrated and bare. 

Yet menaced by such writhing shapes as these 
And marking how the billowy squadrons form. 

To Triton's conch-shell, shrilled in wind-lashed keys 
The battle-spirit in my veins runs warm ; 

I feel myself a rover of the seas 
A Viking, and a comrade of the storm. 



62 



Sonnet CVI 
BEFORE THE MIRROR 

Before the mirror as you thoughtful sit 
To try effects, arrange a ribbon's bow, 
Eve's (laughters in your dalliance I know ; 

Scotch Mary with her coquetry and wit 

Rare Heloise with long-fringed eyes love-lit 
And Guinevere, v/hom Lancelot worshipped so ; 
On such a glass, in letterings of woe 

How many a man has had misfortune writ. 

Here in their day have lovely women stood 
Poising like sv/allows o'er a lucent pool, 

To train a curl, to tie a silken hood 

And practice lures that men might play the fool 

Thus Cleopatra did her arts employ 

So Helen gazed when Paris came from Troy. 



Sonnet CVH 
SEA-MYSTERIES 

If Neptune rose with gleaming trident where 
These ocean deeps lie open to our sight. 
As here we pause and note the scurrying flight 

Of broad-winged scoters through the salty air, — 

Could he from lost mythology declare 

Who m.ade yon sea? Who spun its foam-crests bright? 
What power conceived such transcendental might 

And ploughed the furrows on its brow of care ? 

Ah ! Who shall e'er Creation's veil uplift 
Or guess the problem of the rolling spheres? 
Enough for us to know the Almighty reigns. 
The mystery of love is our great gift 
Though silent are the cabalistic years. 

And the sea's riddle still unsolved remains. 



63 



Sonnet CVIII 
HEART'S EASE 

Not castled walls with gargoyle niche grotesque 
Telling of Knights and noble Dames of old. 
Nor yet demesnes whose fountain-rims unfold 

With Roman marbles rising statuesque — 

Nor where in mellowing orange arabesque 
The sunshine strikes across ancestral wold, 
And stark tradition lends a glamour cold 

Of mediaeval and of picturesque. 

Not such for us; nor very far to roam 

From this our hearth-stone, save on fancy's 
Our joy to feel what hooded twilight brings 

While star by star lights up the heavenly dome; 

With children's voices calling through the home 
And treasured store of soul-regarded things. 



wnigs : 



Sonnet CIX 
SOUL-PACT 

Grandsires and Grandams, chilled to icebergs gaze 

From portraits old, then fade to nothingness ; 

Fathers and Mothers falter in the stress 
Of life's deliberate and relentless ways ; 
Brothers and sisters, each as pass the days 

Like glow-worm shimmers still are less and less; 

While friends, whose lapsing memories we confess 
How nebulous they seem amidst the maze. 

Lovers alone defy the ban of years 
Here where the sea mourns we may so declare, 
And love alone hath warrant to endure. 
This is the essence of our world-careers 
That while all change and variance we share, 
Of only one another are we sure. 



64 



Sonnet CX 
SEA-HARPS 

We two who love the sea in all its moods 
Tenses and colors, tarry here and wait 
While a red globe beyond the western gate 

Sinks and is gone ; and utter silence broods 

Above these ebbing ocean solitudes ; 

And where Arcturus reigns in glittering state, 
Heaven's dusky vaults in splendor radiate 

And muffled ripples thrill night's interludes. 

But entering on this muteness conies the moan 
Of dirge-like winds that rise from spectral caves 
Gulf-murm.urs, sibilance of sand-fretted waves 

And threnodies from twisted conch-trumps blown ; 
Borne in across the tides to thee and me 
The century-chorded harpings of the sea. 



Sonnet CXI 
MICHAEL ANGELO 

Old Angelo, the sculptor Buonarotti 
Michael surnamed and Painter born and Bard, 
vStill like a giant always stands on guard • 

A cavalier invincible and haughty; 

And yet 'tis rumored he was sometimes naughty 
Among the ladies ; thus his name is marred 
However high his varied skill be starred, 

However pure through marble statues taught he.' 

So, Buonarotti ! did you sin ? well, then. 

Such venial fault with Bards is counted human 
And sculptors, too ; mayhap j^ou found what men 
Have always learned if gifted with acumen, 
Huw much the chisel falls below the pen 
How far are both transcended by the woman. 



65 



Sonnet CXI I 
A WOMAN'S CHARM 

A woman's charm is all beyond dispute 
Yet still unread; yet everywhere adored, 
However high scholastic wisdom soared 

Or man's experience has taken root; 

Science and Art are most discreetly mute 
Nor Sibyl's tongue an answer will afford, 
More than dead echoes which are dimly stored 

Fast in the shell of some mid-century lute. 

And this enigma I have found in you 

Thoughever m.uch you are m.y dream and hope ; 

Unanalyzed as is the crystal dew 

That gems the clover of a May-day slope; 

Elusive as quick-silver ; ever new 
And fragrant as the breath of heliotrope. 



Sonnet CXHI 
GYPSIES 

In some existence as apart from this 
We two were gypsies ; sleeping by a hedge, 
Camping at night by underwood or sedge 

And sharing guerdon of un wedded bliss ; 

But now such vagrom errancies we miss 
For law and order dulls the dagger's edge, 
Not as those lovers who were used to pledge 

Their Romany vows with knife-thrust or with kiss. 

The wanderlust is still within our blood 
Howevermore those former days estranged; 
The times the times, and not ourselves have changed 

Since last I sat beneath the hawthorn bud, 
A gypsy tinker, fiddling for scant alms 
While you told fortunes with prophetic palms. 



66 



Sonnet CXIV 
CONTRASTS 

What do I bring you for this past decade 

How stands the balance of the lost and gained ? 
My manhood, has it waxed or has it waned 

As back and forth the ticking pendulum swayed? 

How many inroads have these ten years made 
On what I was ? Has then some rusting stained 
The once fresh leaves which, when the March-light 
reigned, 

Upon the branches of my Spring-time played ! 

I cannot judge; but leave the task to you 
Since introspection may not hit the mark ; 
Yet once, My Love, I had the vital spark 

A temper and a will to dare and do ; 

H Time has blent his Autumn with my Springs 
How fares the wall whereon the dead vine clings? 



Sonnet CXV 
TIME'S RECKONING 

Last night and now this morning, and today 
And then tomorrow ; thus the days drift on 
A marshalling of hours from dusk to dawn ; 

The seasons that with helpless mortals play 

Like cats with mice ; so runs the world away ; 
As it has been through all the aeons drawn 
As it will be when we are dead and gone, 

To Lethe and forgetfulness a prey. 

Time's reckoning; but not with you and me 
However others to such fiat yield. 

For year by year like sweetly-blowing thyme, 
Your grace and loveliness will blossoming be 
In these my songs, as verified and sealed 
Here with the living signet of a rhyme. 



67 



Sonnet CXVI 
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 

Dawnlight that drew a pastel of those hours 
We paced the beach and noted oily swells 
Roll in from leeward ; noon-light's fervent spells 

Searing the tips of harlequin marsh flowers ; 

Twilight, that mingled in with dank mist-showers 
To close the cloisters of the hermit shells, 
While through a clammy fog the clarion bells 

Rung hollowly from out their rock-bound towers. 

But most we loved the moonlight's argent track 
Shifted across the channel like a lance, 
And bringing tales to stir an ocean's breast; 
The conquering folds of Nelson's Union Jack 
Spain's foiled Armada, made the sport of chance 
And Walter Raleigh sailing to the west. 



Sonnet CXVH 
AUTUMN 

October's tracery intensive showed 
This morning as we two haphazard strolled 
In foliage that the maple branches hold 

To strew betimes upon a country road; 

And leaf on leaf by wanton zephyr sowed 

Lay crisply curled along the darkening mould. 
While Autumn brown, sun-tanned and sombre-stoled 

Through wavering woods and down the path-way strode. 

Strange that a fortnight makes the flowers to wane 
Dyeing the leaves with amber tintings clear 
As birds fly south and days are turned a-chill ; 
Bleak messengers, the boisterous wind and rain 
Descending sharp or whistling keen and drear 
By Cadboro Bay and on to Cedar Hill. 



68 



Sonnet CXVIII 
CADBORO WOODS 

The flicker's chattering in fanfaron shrill 
Loud in the timber in staccato spoke, 
And then he dropped from out a knotted oak 

Crossing above the leaf-strewn forest sill, 

Dipping and rising to a neighboring hill 
An arc of gold 'mid Indian-summer smoke ; 
Again his challenge like a bugle broke 

The echoes answered, and then all was still. 

Do you remember where, upon that day 

We found a trickling streamlet's secret cup? 
A cooling rill that gem.-like bubbled up 

A liquid opal, shyly hid away ! 

Do you recall how sea and heaven pierced through 
Wave beside sky, the blue against the blue? 



Sonnet CXIX 
IN WOODLAND WAYS 

We rambled down and past a woodland bight 
Where weed and bramble sparsely interlaced 
A gorgeous China pheasant rose in haste 

And set the air on fire with his flight ; 

The valley quail dispersing left and right 
Whirred level-winged across a thistled waste, 
While pale Diana, crescent-slim and chaste 

Smiled on us from a doorway of the night. 

To us. My Love, that was a day of days 
Clipped from the tattered almanac of Time ; 

To wander forth in sylvan-shaded ways 
Where orange sprigs of honeysuckle climb. 

With Bacchant tempters beckoning through the maze 
And taste the wine of Autumn at its prime. 



69 

Sonnet CXX 
OUTDOORS 

However far our journeying steps have strayed 
In love of nature we are closely bound, 
With prescience of the Druid-temples crowned 

On hills austere, by stream or rustic shade ; 

Brother and sister to each grassy blade 

Comrade and friend to marshes sere embrowned, 
And kindred-linked where jarring skies resound 

To the deep thunder's rumbling cannonade. 

This is the season's priceless heritage ; 

The potent spell which true earth-worship wields. 
And this a tryst that youth will keep with age 

Till the last breath to dissolution yields ; 
Like Sir John Falstaff on the Poet's page 

Dying a boy and babbling of green fields. 



Sonnet CXXI 
DALLAS ROADS 

Against an angle of the staunch sea wall 
The tide leaps, hurled by equinoctial gales ; 
And from these heights we look on tautened sails 

That tensely stretch from full-rigged main-masts tall 

The tireless gulls a-wing complaining call 
And on the shore a wind monotonous wails, 
While one stray sun-glint in a pennant trails 

Its fallow length where breaking white-caps fall. 

How vivid will the picture of this day 

In summer dawns when then remembered, be? 

These serried ranks of blind September spray 
This rocking storm, the canvas off to lee. 

And you and I, uplifted with the sway 

And grim Samsonian wrestlings of the sea. 



70 

Sonnet CXXII 
COURAGE 

Here in this life you find the crucial test 

The irony of death and fate defied ; 

Like those old Grecian warriors who died 
Sword under shield at war's resolved behest; 
This was our touchstone for the forward quest 

As onward we were faring side by side, 

Fronting the years that passed us, while we cried 
"Welcome the coming, speed the departing guest," 

God give us courage, as there is a God 
To dare the utmost rigor of our doom, 

And tread the white-hot plowshares mile on mile. 
To cringe not under stroke of chastening rod 
But wear as from the cradle to the tomb. 
The uncorroding armor of a smile. 



Sonnet CXXIII 
COMRADESHIP 

Still, as the months drift, we are nearer grown 
To one another ; closer year by year. 
Firmer united and more trebly dear 

While days, as leaves, across our path are strown 

Thus in this way Love's miracle is known 
The word of promise holding to the ear, 
So that our souls as listening can hear 

The heart's low murmur in an undertone. 

All that can bring mementoes of the past 
We cherish as the present hours unfold ; 
Etchings of sunrise luminously scrolled 

And after-glow by storm-rack overcast ; 
Kisses and tears; the comradeship we share 
The joys divided and the pangs we bear. 



71 



Sonnet CXXIV 
METEMPSYCHOSIS 

If it be true in dying that the soul 
By reason of the laws which so ordain, 
Seeks for another, to on earth remain 

As part and parcel of a destined whole ; — 

Then, as the needle wheels toward the pole 

How straight my wraith in this return would fain 
Clinging to you, lost vantage to regain 

Cleave through existence till it reached its goal. 

No dread of parting ever comes to me 

Nor finding one to take your place instead ; 

The love we pledged is for eternity 
I care not how the horoscope is read ; 

Not to be severed by Infinity 

However fare the living or the dead. 



Sonnet CXXV 
UNREVEALED 

This is that labyrinth men call the sea 
Cruel and willful as a woman's whim; 
Over its reefs the buoyant sea-fowl skim 

In wisps and skeins that waver restlessly; 
Behold its secret, sourceless pedigree 
Written in ages when the earth lay dim, 
And hark to its Circean-chanted hymn 

Which was, which is, and evermore will be. 

Above this crag's wave-battered citadel 

We lie and glimpse the wake of outbound ships, 
While basks the sea in drowsy indolence ; 
Its secret hidden in a sculptured shell 
With white foam-fingers ever at its lips. 
More than a Sphynx in its dumb reticence. 



72 



Sonnet CXXVI 
FOR CECILE 

You know my mood, both somber and elate 

Yet sanguine-hued, though time wears on apace ; 

Steeled by the one remembrance of your face 
Through all our years to steadfast watch and wait, 
Home was for me where you have been my mate 

In crowded towns or lonely country-place. 

As one whose dour tenacity of race 
Makes you alone my idol consecrate. 

Fade out. O sun, in the enkindled west 

Beyond these hills, yon headland and the sea; 

Die down, O winds, past this torn hemlock's crest 
Which ragged looms, a lightning-blasted tree ; 

Not God Himself shall have the strength to wrest 
Two souls apart, grown close like you to me. 



Sonnet CXXVH 
CHOPIN 

By wooded shores we hear orchestral strains 
Of Chopin's genius echoing 'mid the leaves ; 
An oboe sighs, the throbbing 'cello grieves 

With wailing flute and violin refrains ; 

Then swift the theme its final height attains 
And whelmingly the blinding harmony cleaves 
Then sinks ; while last a quivering minor weaves 

Rises and falls, and past the surge-roll wanes. 

Solve me the maskery of this wizard Pole 
Whose nocturne dies in spangled vaults above ; 
What was the amour he was dreaming of 

Writ for all time on fate's clandestine scroll ? 

What woman's voice had sirenized his soul 
How much is music and how much is love? 



73 

Sonnet CXXVIII 
LONG AFTER 

Long after, when this same far sun will shake 
FHnging its torches on the restless sea, 
There will be those will muse of you and me 

When they their walks by woods and beaches take. 

Because of what love's reveries awake — 
These lines for future ages held in fee, 
Upwelling now and circling liquidly 

Like ripples on the bosom of a lake. 

Long afterward ; what matters then to us 

Unless it be that haply some may say, 
"As these did love with full hearts tremulous 

We too adore, forever and for aye." 
And speaking so, shall rightly even thus 

Unseal the memory of our yesterday. 



Sonnet CXXIX 
THE DOWNS 

Their crisp declivities to eastward glide 

Star-sprinkled with a million glistering flowers, 
Where lazy fiood of intermingled hours 

Seeps with the seeping of a turquoise tide ; 

Ear out the Straits in conscious might divide 
With peace which broods, or vengeful storm that scourj 
These hillsides from the ridged Olympic towers 

Whose snow-thatched peaks immutably abide. 

How prized by us was this serenity 
Of sane repose and all-inviolate hush. 

Shut from the jangling bedlam of the towns; 
To stand and face a prophesying sea 

The moon uprisen, or morning's carmine blush 
There bv the stillness of the shelving downs. 



74 



Sonnet CXXX 
BAG-PIPES 

From skirling bag-pipes in a thicket green 

Beyond the coigne of Beacon Hill's tall mound, 
Come Gaelic marches, fittingly renowned 

By pipers played in forest depths unseen ; 

Against this withered broom we careless lean 
Its denseness in the citron sunshine drowned, 
While still the pipes in droning discord pound 

The tremorous air, the downs that stretch between. 

And then I clutch a knife-scarred wooden bench — 
This of all music, is most glad and gay 

Your fifes and bugles are mere pots and pans; 
I see the flags, the fighting, and the trench — 
By God ! I had forgotten Lucknow's day 

The Campbell pipes, the gathering of the clans. 



Sonnet CXXXI 
ROBERT BURNS 

Beside these oaks on carven granite lone 

Kneels Robert Burns at Highland Mary's feet; 
Beyond, the waves a solemn requiem beat 

A prologue to this tragedy in stone 

And figured bronze ; whence is the plow-boy flown 
Who loved so wildly and who sang so sweet 
That fate gave way, and signalled a retreat 

When the world claimed the singer as her own. 

Love while we may ; let this be our decree 

Lest the heart's rapture might remain unsaid; 

This hour, this day was given me and thee 
Leaving the rabble to its idols wed; 

Here as we journey downward to the sea 
That chants the glory of the deathless dead. 



75 

Sonnet CXXXII 
THE SHEARS OF FATE 

Still hang the keen, arrested shears of fate 

Above our heads, where fortune bids them stay; 

While plies the whirring loom of night and day 
With warp and woof of threads dispassionate ; 
The seasons pass in their accustomed state 

Spring's dryad step and Winter's hodden grey ; 

Yet time at length, brooking no more delay 
Shall usher us through death's amorphous gate. 

We might have parted when the years were young 
Much joy have missed, some ills had waved aside, 
Yet aye the three weird sisters testify, — • 
So ye have walked life's thorny lanes among 
By hope sustained, in perfect love allied 
Or late, or soon, what matters it to die? 



Sonnet CXXXHI 
FROM A BALCONY 

From this our balcony we view the sea 

Star-gemmed and moon-bedappled where it shines 
In midnight's hushes ; honeysuckle vines 

Waft up their fragrance here unceasingly ; 

And close at hand a slim arbutus tree 

Crinkled and brown unswerving upward twines ; 
While drifting past from harped aeolian pines 

Comes a faint breeze attuned in elfin key. 

Not always may we know such occult sense 

Of zones transfigured ; still and more than still, 

When wood and shore are wrapped in rays intense 
While the moon sleeps on yonder curtained hill ; 

Yet shall the fairies oft this romance write 

In starry script across a page of night. 



76 



Sonnet CXXXIV 
BURNT OFFERINGS 

I offer ashes of the days and nights 

To lay upon the altar of your life; 

All that is sacred to the name of wife 
I would inscribe ; as one who musing writes 
His record with a stylus which indites 

A calendar of passing seasons; rife 

With what was registered of joy or strife 
Of garnered sorrows or of brief delights. 

Burnt-offerings these; and from a Pagan heart. 
Mere cinders of the hours and days and weeks 
Brought silently to render up their plea ; 
Here where the foam-shapes from the tide-rips start 
Carving us statues of the sandalled Greeks, 
And Aphrodite, rising from the sea. 



Sonnet CXXXV 
STARS 

We see the same illuminative stars 
As once they twinkled, and are twinkling yet, 
Since time first counted them as brilliants set 

Orion, Venus, Jupiter and Mars ; 

Shining above Napoleonic wars 
And warning Romeo and Juliet, 
Or gleaming cold where crowded waters fret 

The sandy confines of these tidal bars. 

So as of eld they gather in the sky 
Whose distant bourne shall ever be untrod, 
And cast their luster over ebon sod 

From where they beam, held rigidly on high ; 
Lighting the gateway to the halls of God 

The mystic flambeaux of eternity. 



11 



Sonnet CXXXVI 
WINTER 

I had an image of a land of snows 
Of groined and fluted architecture white, 
Where field and stream beneath the chill despite 

Of bitter days in ivory stiffness froze; 

And where within an icy garden close 
No blossom nodded in the deadly blight 
Of winter's tyranny ; while banished quite 

Were garlandry of lily and of rose. 

But here December sunlight's broidery 

Silvers Oak Bay; and balmy west winds blow; 

And sparkling up to us the lissome sea 
Paces a stately minuet below ; 

And mid the garden's burgeoning poetry- 
Are wall-flowers and a budding jacqueminot. 



Sonnet CXXXVII 
MORTMAIN 

If you were first to seek the far beyond 
Although I pray that we may go together — 
Nor time nor distance could release the tether 

Which binds us firmly in enduring bond ; 

To you alone my heart and soul respond 

Not caring through the circling seasons whether 
Spring dons her leaves, or clash of stormy weather 

Flings wide those leaves when Winter waves his wand. 

For night and day I should remember well 
Your every look and gesture ; to my eyes 
Your face would be the first star in the skies; 

Your voice would seem the murmur of this shell. 
And I should feel, by these mysterious sands 
The spirit-clasp and clinging of your hands. 



78 



Sonnet CXXXVIII 
FAME 

A craving thirst for fame was never mine 

It was enough to dream and go my way ; 

To search for fire deep-hidden in my clay 
And keep my youth mid the slow years decline; 
To strive ; to suffer ; yet to make no sign 

Salute the Gods and what they willed, obey ; 

And in the varying periods and their sway 
To weld my hopes and happiness with thine. 

And to that false lure of the unwary sought 
The Tantalus-fruit by mortals miscalled fame, 
I am not urged; but leave my lusty rhyme 
As some male foundling through the snow is brought, 
To live or die ; with or without a name 
Abandoned on the door-step cold of Time. 



Sonnet CXXXIX 
DRIFTWOOD 

This drift-wood in compact alignment piled 
Along the beach, or wind-rowed on these rocks, 
Was winter's harvest, gleaned from scything shocks 

Of wave on wave in January wild ; 

Here Boreas from his northern caves exiled 
Sang in the rigging at the outer docks. 
While straining ropes and humming tackle-blocks 

With creaking whine the sailor's watch beguiled. 

But now the sea in amethystine mass 
Stretches away as level as a floor, 
Where I and April, reminiscent stand; 
And mindful still, and stooping as I pass 
I take a bit of drift-wood from the shore 
And write your name there, on the unruffled sand. 



79 



Sonnet CXL 
AT THE LAST 

When that my ashes have been laid to rest 
The crumbled embers of a burned-out fire, 
I, who have written, daring to aspire 

High as the highest, noblest as the best : — 

All of earth's yearnings knocking at my breast 
Brother to sorrow, bond-man of the lyre, 
Who that has loved me like my Heart's Desire 

Or half the story of my vigil guessed. 

Not as the man that I have had to be 
Shall I to her and other years belong; 

Never a moment from the vision free 

How should they know me, this benighted throng? 

Proud as was Lucifer, stoic as the sea 

Dreamer of dreams and singer of the song. 



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